Subject: Re: Would it make sense to add a commit.signOff config?

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2025 08:44:47 +0900

Carlo Marcelo Arenas Belón <[email-masked]> writes:

> this was discussed recently[0] and the point that was made is that SOA are
> meant to be relevant mainly in open source contexts and should be explicitly
> given.
>
> Carlo
>
> [0] https://lore.kernel.org/git/[email-masked]/

Thanks for a spelunking starter.

Perhaps we should resurrect a proposed patch from 2020 (which no
longer apply cleanly, but quoted to show what the additinoal text
said).

https://lore.kernel.org/git/[email-masked]/

to save time from potential contributors?  I do not want to see new
contributors feeling they wasted their time after putting their
effort.

diff --git a/Documentation/git-commit.txt b/Documentation/git-commit.txt
index ced5a9beab..1909551087 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-commit.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-commit.txt
@@ -171,6 +171,13 @@ The `-m` option is mutually exclusive with `-c`, `-C`, and `-F`.
 	the rights to submit this work under the same license and
 	agrees to a Developer Certificate of Origin
 	(see http://developercertificate.org/ for more information).
++
+As it makes it harder to argue against one who tells the court "that
+log message ends with a SoB by person X but it is very plausible
+that it was done by inertia without person X really intending to
+certify what DCO says, and the SoB is meaningless." to more
+publicized ways to add SoB automatically, Git does not (and will not)
+have a configuration variable to enable it by default.
 
 -n::
 --no-verify::